It’s day three of our year-end, Top 50 rollout, and the games are getting more and more essential. Remember, this list was constructed using careful math and science, and is therefore indisputable. Just kidding: Argue away!

#30: Pix’n Love Rush

Pix’n Love Rush is a hyperactive love letter to the world of videogames. You play as an excitable cat who must run, jump, and shoot through randomly-selected mini-worlds. If you do well, you’ll advance through a variety of gaming-themed backgrounds, but if you fail, your low spot in the online leaderboards will shame you publicly.

Surviving this arcade shoot ’em up is like trying to stay dry in a rainstorm. Bullets fly all around you, and it’s nearly impossible to stay alive. But if you let bullets graze you, you’ll power up your attacks and give it as good as you get. Dodonpachi Resurrection also has some of the best controls we’ve seen in an iPhone shooter.

This series is obviously a clone of God of War, but we still love it. In Hero of Sparta 2, you can slay giant monsters, wield mythical weapons, and ride a flying horse. You’re just doing it on your iPhone instead of your Playstation.

Our Bottom Line: If you have a PSP, buy God of War. If you have an iPhone, buy Hero of Sparta II.

One of the more intriguing puzzle games of the year, Slice It! is a game about creating equal-sized pieces with a certain number of cuts. It’s like when you have to serve a pizza to a large group of people who all want an equal slice, but they start putting arbitrary demands on how many times you can slice it. Then the pizza man starts delivering oddly-shaped pizzas, and it just gets complicated.

Our Bottom Line: Even people who hated geometry class are likely to enjoy cutting up shapes in Slice It.

One of the best freemium games of the year, Gun Bros is a twin-stick shooter that serves up hundreds of waves of enemies. As you fight, you’ll unlock new weapons and earn virtual cash to buy them. Some of the guns, like pistols that shoot knives, can get a little expensive, though, but that’s when you just recruit your friend and use their arsenal.

This sequel to our Game of the Month from September 2009 adds online multiplayer through Game Center and an even bigger story and quest. Specialized training means you can be exactly the kind of monster-slaughtering hero you want, and it’s wrapped up in a gorgeous visual and audio presentation.

Our Bottom Line: Dungeon Hunter 2 takes everything that made the original a great Diablo clone, and makes it better.

This classy adventure game made historical mysteries exciting long before The Da Vinci Code. You play as a pair of investigators who are looking to solve a murder, which seems to be tied to the ancient order of the Knights Templar. Great cutscenes and voice acting make this a highly cinematic game.

Our Bottom Line: We were swept up by this intelligent, intriguing story with lots of likable characters.

While Canabalt was a simple running game set in a dystopian future, Mirror’s Edge takes that premise and, well, runs with it. In addition to jumps and slides, you can also fight hand-to-hand with enemies and wall-run across oppressive billboards. We love the elegant look of this game, and the swipe controls work perfectly.

This epic space-faring game combines trading, fighting, and intergalactic bar-hopping all in one app. It’s got hours of missions to get lost in, and some gorgeous views to admire while you drift among the stars. If you love space-age RPGs, this is the one to buy.

Our Bottom Line: Galaxy on Fire 2 is a supernova. Get lost in space and don’t bring your head up until you’ve reached the end.

A shooter that doesn’t require you to hit any buttons, Tilt To Live has a great sense of humor to match its catchy visuals. Just guide your arrow to the power-ups, avoid the red dots, and rack up awesome achievements. Since its original release, Tilt To Live has added a few new game modes, and we think it’s now one of the best action games on the App Store.

Our Bottom Line: Buy this accelerometer-based high-score game and you’ll stave off boredom for hours.

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Latest Recommended Games

The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

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